Tiffany given green light for Rubedo metal

By Craig Heatly

The National Advertising Division in the US has ruled in favour of Tiffany & Co. after it was pulled up for advertising that it had created a “new alloy” when it launched its Rubedo collection in February this year.

The ruling says that Tiffany & Co. can call Rubedo a new alloy, despite many questions being raised regarding the “new jewellers metal”. The New York Times featured an article which disputed its originality and its legitimacy as a metal.

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The National Advertising Division, a branch of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, ruled in Tiffany and Co.’s favour. It said that the company could continue to claim that Rubedo was a new metal; however it has had to remove some of its advertising claims.

The Rubedo alloy is a combination of gold, silver, zinc, germanium. Tiffany and Co. has described it as a metal that “marries the richness of gold, the brilliance of silver and the warmth of copper.”

The company has now had to remove this claim from its marketing material after the NAD ruled that there could be confusion from customers as to the value of the actual metallic elements of the metal.